Many games are facilitated at a control point to control the progress of a game and/or to provide a biased opponent against which one or more players compete. Two examples of such facilitated games are card games, such as poker, and slot-machine games. In the game of poker, a dealer controls the deck and, in many situations, enforces the rules of the game. In slot-machine games, the mechanics of the machine are programmed to control the rules of the game as well as the odds of the other player(s) winning. The popularity of these types of games, whether in one's home or in a casino-gambling environment, continues to increase. Whether played in a manually-controlled environment or in an automated environment such as a computer game, society's fascination with such facilitated games and gaming activity is unfaltering.
In traditional games of this type, players gather to compete against the facilitator and sometimes against each other as well. In a dealer-facilitated poker game, for instance, players compete by waging bets that their poker hand will have a higher poker rank than the respective ranks of the dealer's and other players' hands. The highest poker rank in each played hand is the winner of the hand, and if bets were made, the winner collects the bets made by the losing players for that hand.
Other table games are similar in that players place their bets, and the player with the winning hand wins the pot. One such poker game is known as “Hold'em,” where each player at the table is dealt, face-down, a hand of two cards. After a betting round, the dealer turns face-up three communal cards known as the “flop.” Bets are made, and additional communal cards are turned face-up, ultimately exposing the entire communal card hand known as the “board.” Thus, each of the players uses his/her two-card face-up hand in connection with the board to determine the resulting poker rank, and the highest poker rank identifies the winner of the hand. The winner collects the pot.
While Hold'em and other facilitated games continue to be extremely popular, fascination and continued interest can be difficult without changing some aspects of the game. Implementing such changes successfully can be difficult, however. Too large a degree of change can intimidate players due to seemingly-excessive efforts to learn the import of the changes. Moreover, in the wagering environments, too much change risk the appearance of being implemented to unfairly favor the facilitator; and, if changes unfairly disfavor the facilitator, the game would not be implemented by otherwise interested facilitators. It would therefore be desirable to provide such facilitated games with different excitement and more intricate and interesting betting strategies, while avoiding the above-discussed and other problems.